


Tomte Trouble

by Patomac



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Mythology - Freeform, Norwegian Mythology & Folklore, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21880435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patomac/pseuds/Patomac
Summary: Precisely twelve minutes later, Andy met me at the door. He was dressed casually, in loose, worn-out jeans and a t-shirt with a design so faded I could barely make out the band’s name. A layer of stubble clung to his defined jaw, and a beer bottle dangled from his grasp.“Starting a little early, are we?” I asked.He reached into his pocket, pulled out another bottle, and shoved it into my hand. “Trust me, you’re going to need this.”I hid my smile as I followed him into his house. To my left, the kitchen was exactly as it had appeared in the text. The table was upside down on the floor with its legs sticking up in the air. The chairs sat around it, balanced precariously on their backs and handles. Four placemats lay on the wrong side of the table, face down.I cracked up laughing.Or, what happens when your not-quite boyfriend acquires atomte, and has no idea what to do with him.
Relationships: OC/OC
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Let's Create Secret Santa 2019





	Tomte Trouble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alleice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alleice/gifts).



> This story is set in a world I've previously explored, but have never posted about. The simple worldbuiliding and character rundown is:
> 
>   * In Divinity, all myths are real
>   * Astrid is from a sect that worships the Norse pantheon
>   * Andy is new(ish) in town
>   * Hjalmar and Torvald are Astrid's brothers 
> 

> 
> See endnotes for mythical creature information.

My phone buzzed on the counter. I lunged for it, grateful for any distraction from my laundry.

_Something really weird is going on over here._

I felt a smile curl across my lips. Something ‘really weird’ had been going on at Andy’s house since he moved to town a month ago. Despite numerous trips, I’d yet to find anything besides his sock drawer out of order.

I had, however, learned that he kept condoms available in every room.

I tapped out a reply on my phone. _Define really weird._

The response didn’t even take ten seconds. He must have already been typing.

_All of my furniture is upside down._

That gave me pause. _What do you mean upside down?_

Another reply zinged through 30 seconds later. A tiny picture of Andy’s kitchen showed up on my phone. The broad oak table he’d bought from Hjalmar was on its back.

I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.

 _Okay,_ I typed out. _I’ll be there in ten minutes._

 _Hurry,_ was Andy’s only reply. 

***

Precisely twelve minutes later, Andy met me at the door. He was dressed casually, in loose, worn-out jeans and a t-shirt with a design so faded I could barely make out the band’s name. A layer of stubble clung to his defined jaw, and a beer bottle dangled from his grasp.

“Starting a little early, are we?” I asked.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out another bottle, and shoved it into my hand. “Trust me, you’re going to need this.”

I hid my smile as I followed him into his house. To my left, the kitchen was exactly as it had appeared in the cell phone image he’d sent me. The table was upside down on the floor with its legs sticking up in the air. The chairs sat around it, balanced precariously on their backs and handles. Four placemats lay on the wrong side of the table, face down.

I cracked up laughing. Andy looked at me as though I’d lost my mind.

“What about this is funny?” he said. “I come home from the store, and everything I own is upside down! Not just some things. Everything, Astrid! Look!”

He opened a cabinet door. Sure enough, every plate was wrong-side up.

The stack was very neat though.

I grinned as I pushed past Andy into the family room. The couch was on its end, the end tables were topsy-turvy, and the TV—still tuned to Netflix, somehow—featured a host of zombies shambling around on their heads. 

“Please tell me this is a prank,” Andy said. “Some sort of… hazing ritual you all play on newcomers.”

“When we haze you, you’ll know,” I said. I twisted the top off the beer bottle and took a long swig before glancing down at it in surprise. Andy was usually a Budweiser and Yuengling kind of guy, but this was the good stuff, brewed at the Four Horsemen out on the outskirts of town. Their Christmas Ale was rich and cinnamon-y and perfect. It always sold out in the first week.

I closed my eyes for a moment, savoring it. When I opened them, Andy looked like he wanted to strangle me.

“Well?” he said.

I quirked an eyebrow. “You are desperate.”

“Astrid!”

I laughed again. Gods, it was funny to wind him up. “You have a _tomte_.”

“What the hell is a _tomte_?”

“It’s like a little elf,” I said. “Not like a proper Norse elf—you know, tall, imposing, aloof. More like Santa’s elves.”

Andy took a long draught from his beer. “You’re trying to tell me that a little… I don’t know, munchkin—” he flattened his palm and ducked down to knee height – “did all of this?”

“They have magic,” I said. “And I probably wouldn’t refer to it as a munchkin. You might offend it.”

Andy tugged on his hair. It stuck up in a clump on the side of his head. “Offend it! What the fuck do I care if I offend it?”

A loud crash came from the other room. Andy’s head whipped around. “What the—”

I shoved a hand over his mouth. “They don’t like swearing.”

“They don’t like—Astrid!”

I’d already pushed past him, back through the kitchen and into the dining room. This table was also upside down on the floor. Six place settings, each complete with a wine goblet, had been set on top of it on the ground.

That wasn’t what caught my attention, though. No, I was more concerned with the glass chandelier that was now in pieces atop the otherwise perfectly-set table.

Andy came to a stop behind me. “That was my chandelier!”

“It still is,” I said. “All the pieces are there. We can put it back together.”

“Forget it,” Andy said. “I’ll get a new one.”

Several loud thumps echoed from the stairs in quick succession, _bump-bump-bump-bump-bump._ I glanced back at Andy before completing the circuit around the house and returning to the front stairs.

Twenty pairs of athletic shoes lay on the rubber mat beside the door. These hadn’t been placed deliberately. No, they’d been thrown.

“Well,” I said. “You definitely have a _tomte_.”

Andy pulled on the roots of his hair again before he slumped back against the wall. “I don’t want a _tomte_ ,” he said.

I patted his arm consolingly. “Poor baby.”

He shrugged me off, but not enthusiastically. “How do I get rid of it?”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Come again?”

“How do I get rid of the gremlin haunting my house?”

A bang reverberated through the floor. I winced. “Okay, ground rules,” I said. “First, let’s not refer to it as anything but a _tomte_ , or maybe a nisse, if you prefer the Norwegian variant. Second, no swearing.”

Andy grimaced at me over the lip of his bottle. “I think I got that one, thanks.”

“Third,” I said, “ _Tomtar_ are strict traditionalists. No talk about drastic changes, okay?”

“Like burning the whole place down for the insurance money?”

Upstairs, something smashed.

“Like that,” I agreed.

Andy glanced at the stairs, seemed to think better of it, and then retreated to the family room. He set his beer down long enough to right an armchair and pull me into his lap.

He braced his hands on either side of my hips and dropped his forehead against the back of my shoulder. “Please tell me you have some sort of solution.”

His breath tickled the shell of my ear. I wriggled, positioning myself so I could see him. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair, smoothing down the tufts he’d been tugging at earlier. “I do. But you’re not going to like it.”

“You need that printed on your business cards,” Andy said. “Astrid Sundblom. I can solve your problems, but you won’t like the solution.”

I tugged on Andy’s ear before I went back to running my fingers through his hair. “ _Tomtar_ aren’t dangerous,” I said. “You’re lucky to have one, actually.”

“Lucky?” Andy gave the upside-down couch a very pointed stare.

I laughed. “They’re not very common,” I said. “Legend has it that they’re the spirits of the first landowner who settled a farm. They live nearby and help the current owners keep the place nice.”

“This isn’t a farm,” Andy said.

“Not anymore,” I said. “How old is the house?”

“It was built in the eighties.”

“And it only had one owner before you?”

“The realtor said that a little old lady had lived here for thirty-five years. Apparently she died right over there.” Andy nodded at the windows that led out onto the small, rickety back porch. “How on earth could you know that?”

I smiled and pointedly ignored the question. “Your _tomte_ is left over from when this place was all one farm. He stayed with the land when it was subdivided, probably with the descendants of the original owners. The old woman was probably the last surviving member of the family. When you moved in, you inherited him, so to speak.”

Andy swore quietly this time, and thankfully our supernatural friend didn’t hear him. “I can’t get rid of him, can I?”

“You can,” I said carefully. “But you might be better off actually burning the place to the ground.”

Andy raised his eyebrows at me.

I gestured at the couch. “This is what a _tomte_ does when it’s unhappy,” I said. “It causes mischief. Pulls pranks. In one of the oldest stories about them, a _tomte_ feels disrespected, and it slaughters the family’s prize cow.”

“Well that seems like an overreaction.”

I shrugged. “They’re prideful creatures. But they’re useful, too. _Tomtar_ are basically little housekeepers. If you keep yours happy, he’ll tidy up when you’re not looking.”

“It’ll clean up after me?” Andy asked. I nodded. “Okay. Now we’re talking.”

He nudged me off his lap, and we both stood up. The mess hadn’t gotten any better while we were talking, but it hadn’t gotten any worse either. Andy rubbed his hands together. “Okay. How do I get my furniture put back?”

“You don’t,” I said. Andy’s head whipped around, and I laughed. “Look, I did tell you that you weren’t going to like it.”

Andy heaved a long-suffering sigh, and made a sort-of ‘get on with it’ gesture with his palm.

“ _Tomtar_ are creatures out of folklore,” I said. “So our understanding of them, even in Divinity, comes primarily from folklore.”

Andy arched an eyebrow at me. “What do you call folklore when it’s happening to you right now?” he asked.

“If you don’t write it down, it’s a rumor,” I supplied. “And you know better than everyone that we are so, so careful with what we write down.”

Andy crossed his arms. “So that’s all you’ve got for me?” he asked. “Folklore and rumors?”

“And speculation,” I said. “Back in the day, when you visited someone’s house and found it to be exceptionally clean, you might remark on their luck at having a _tomte_. The same thing went when someone was always catching lucky breaks. The other villagers would say that they had a _tomtar_. It was a sort of personification of the luck.”

Andy leaned in closer to me. His lips brushed my ear. “It’s really hot when you do this whole sexy teacher thing.”

I batted him away. “What I’m saying is, success draws success. Luck draws luck. A clean house draws a house-cleaning spirit. If you want your _tomte_ to be happy, you need to start cleaning up some of your messes.

Andy stared around at the living room dispiritedly. “Really?” he said. “That’s it? That’s your magical solution?”

I bumped his hip with mine. “Sorry. I know you moved here dreaming of Harry Potter, but real magic is… real magic is…”

I struggled to find a word.

“Disappointing?” Andy offered.

“Different,” I said gently. “It’s a lot more work than just memorizing a few words and pointing a wand at someone. It requires knowledge, yes, but also hard work. Sacrifice.”

“That’s why there aren’t a lot of witches here, are there?”

“Probably,” I said. “Although you haven’t spent a lot of time in the East Woods, have you?”

“With all your prohibitions?” Andy gave an affected shudder. “I wouldn’t dare.”

I hip-checked him again. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s start with the shoes in the hall.”

And, with another loud sigh, Andy allowed me to drag him off to the stairs. 

***

It took the better part of the afternoon to set the house to rights. Halfway through I took pity on Andy and gave my brothers a call. It took some wheedling, but eventually I convinced Hjalmar to get in his car and drive over.

Torvald came too, though why I couldn’t tell you. While Andy and Hjalmar went upstairs to lift furniture, he planted himself on the newly righted couch, beer in one hand and bag of chips in the other.

The zombies were still shambling around on their heads.

“What are you even doing over here?” he asked. “Longest night is tomorrow. Don’t you have things to do?”

“Don’t you?” I said.

Torvald grunted. “You know what I mean, Astrid. You, Andy—what the fuck is going on?”

Something shattered in the kitchen. “Oi! Watch it, Torvald!”

He grumbled at me. “Don’t dodge the question. You and Andy. Are you like… a thing?”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” Torvald said. He crunched on a chip thoughtfully for a moment. “It’s just that it’s weird, that’s all. At first I thought you were spending time with him because he was new to town. Culture shock, and all that. But it’s been what, seven months now? You don’t need to baby him anymore.”

“I’m not babying him.” I picked a pillow up off the floor and gave it a fluff.

Torvald gave my hands a very pointed look.

I flushed as I deposited the pillow in its proper place on the couch. “He needs a little help, that’s all.”

“With the supernatural stuff? Sure,” Torvald said. “With this?”

I crossed my arms. “What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing,” Torvald said.

I waited.

Torvald broke. “It’s just a little domestic, is all I’m saying.”

“Domestic!” I said. “This is not domestic!”

Torvald put his beer down on the coffee table. He sat back in the chair, folding broad arms across his chest, and nodded at the pillow I’d just propped up. “Did Andy buy that?”

I felt heat climbing to my cheeks. I’d picked it up at a flea market a few weeks back. The colors had reminded me of the vintage checked plaid on the couch.

“If I say no will you get off my back?”

Torvald smirked at me. “Men don’t buy decorative throw pillows, Astrid. And women don’t buy throw pillows for men they see every once in a while.”

“Wow,” I said, injecting as much sarcasm as possible into my tone. “Detective Sundblom. I’m impressed.”

Torvald gave me the finger. I supposed I should be grateful, since at least the _tomte_ wouldn’t hear it. “He’s your boyfriend then?”

“Fuck off, Torvald.” Another smash echoed from the kitchen. “And use a coaster, there’s a _tomte_.”

***

That night, when Torvald and Hjalmar left, I followed them out. I said goodbye to Andy—okay, I kissed him goodbye, enthusiastically and for quite a while—but instead of staying over, I went home. I cooked dinner for myself. I took a shower. I went to sleep.

Alone, if you’re wondering. I could have called someone—there had to be someone in my phone who wasn’t dating anyone—but I didn’t. I slept alone, covered in the heavy blankets I almost never bothered to drag out of my closet anymore because most of the time it seemed that Andy was in my bed.

It bothered me to admit it, but Torvald was right. Andy and I went out together more than four times a week. We texted each other constantly. We slept at each other’s houses all the time. From the outside, anyone would assume he was my boyfriend. It was the only logical conclusion to draw.

And yet we’d never had that conversation. The conversation. The “I’m sleeping with you and only with you” talk that seemed to stop so many of my budding relationships right in their tracks.

I was still mulling it over three days later when I ran into Andy at the Christmas fair.

He’d swapped his t-shirt for a polar fleece, and a knitted cap sat on his head. A few days’ worth of stubble lined his jaw.

“Enjoying that holiday time off, are you?”

He smiled, rubbing his jaw ruefully. “It’s been nice,” he said. “Haven’t seen you around much, though.”

I ducked my head. “I’ve been busy.”

“Sure,” Andy said. “How’s the firm?”

“Good,” I said. “It’s been pretty quiet lately. Surprisingly, given the time of year.”

Andy raised his eyebrows. “You get a lot of lawsuits in December?”

“Not lawsuits. It’s the… consulting work that gets me.”

“Ah,” Andy said, as if he understood.

I sighed. “A lot of cultures believe that this is a time when otherworldly entities are more free to roam the world. Ours is one of them. If anyone so much as thinks Norse, I get a call.”

“So you really have been busy.”

I flushed red. “Andy—”

He waved a hand. “Forget it.”

I thought he might walk away from me then. Come to his senses and realize that I was not girlfriend material. For all the communicating I did in my life—at work with clients and at home with the gods—I sucked at just talking to people.

Especially men.

Especially men I liked.

“How’s your _tomte_?” I asked.

“I think he’s settling down,” Andy said. “No more furniture incidents. Though I did wake up to find my sneaker collection had been rearranged.”

I smiled. “By color?”

“Oldest to newest, actually.” Andy’s eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t think he’s just going to throw them away when he feels like they’re too old, do you?”

“Do you keep your old sneakers that long?”

“… maybe.”

Andy’s eyes glinted with repressed laughter, and I couldn’t help but reach out and punch him in the arm.

He affected a mock hurt expression. “Hey now! I’m sensitive!”

“Poor baby,” I said.

I’d said that to him three days ago, in the midst of _tomte_ damage control. I could see the memory flash behind Andy’s eyes.

His smile dropped. “Well,” he said. “I guess I should be going. Merry Christmas, Astrid. Or Good Yule, or whatever.”

“Good Yule,” I replied with a forced smile.

Andy nodded at me one more time before he turned and started to walk away. He was four stalls down when I remembered something else about his _tomte_. A crucial something else.

“Wait!” I called.

***

Half an hour later, Andy and I stood in his kitchen. A pot of water boiled on the stovetop.

“So,” he said. “This is witchcraft.”

“This is folk magic,” I said. “Or possibly ancestor-worship, if you prefer.”

I gestured for Andy to hand me the box on the counter.

Andy wrinkled his nose. “Cream of Wheat is disgusting.”

“It’s a type of porridge,” I said. “And that’s the third thing you have to do for _tomtar_. Keep a clean house. Treat them with respect. And give them a bowl of porridge with a dab of butter on Christmas eve.”

I poured the grains into the boiling water, and Andy retreated to the fridge. He returned holding the butter dish.

“There’s so much to learn,” he murmured in my ear. “Every time I turn around, it seems like there’s something else.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“I do better when you’re with me.”

I turned the heat down low and turned around. Andy stood behind me, head ducked to meet my gaze. I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, soothe all those little hurts away.

“You stayed away for three days,” he said.

I dropped my gaze. “I know.”

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“I don’t know what we are,” he said. “But I hope it’s not the kind of relationship where we just stop talking to each other.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “You know that.”

He looked doubtful, and I turned back around. I gave the Cream of Wheat a stir. “It’s ready,” I said.

“Awesome,” he said. “I’m going to go set up.”

“Set up?” I asked. “For what?”

“You’ll see,” he called, disappearing into the living room.

I had my doubts, but I kept them to myself. I poured the porridge into a bowl, cut a generous slice of butter off the end of the stick, and plopped it on top before following Andy into the living room.

I discovered him kneeling behind the upturned couch cushions. He’d pulled them off and was rearranging them into what looked suspiciously like a fort.

“I’m not sure this counts as ‘keeping the house clean,’” I said.

“It’s a _tomte_ blind,” Andy said. He balanced another pillow atop the two he’d already stacked together. “We can keep a lookout for the little guy.”

I put my hand on my hip. “He’s not going to come while you’re watching.”

He glanced up at me. “How would you know?”

“Kids everywhere have been staying up to catch a glimpse of Santa from time immemorial. Do you think they’ve ever seen him?”

Andy stopped stacking pillows for a moment. “Are you implying that Santa is as real as the _tomte_?”

“Not the point.”

“We’ll loop back to this,” Andy said. He pointed to the hearth. “Set that down over there.”

I did as prompted and returned to find Andy on his stomach in the middle of the pillows. “This will not end well,” I declared.

He stuck his bottom lip out. “Join me. You know you want to.”

I did.

With a reluctant sigh, I wormed my way into the fort by Andy’s side.

It brought us into close quarters—unnervingly close, seeing as all I’d thought about for the past few days was being next to him again.

The scent of his cologne, dark and piney, whispered through the enclosed space.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the Christmas Eve thing when we first found out about the _tomte_?” Andy asked.

“I forgot.”

Andy’s head swiveled. “The great Astrid Sundblom? Forgetting her mythology? Egads.”

I would have elbowed him if my bodyweight hadn’t been balanced there already. As it was, giving his foot a light tap with mine was the best I could do. “I’m not perfect.”

“I don’t expect you to be.”

I looked at him then. Really looked at him. In the shadows of the fort, his cheekbones looked hollowed and his jaw more pronounced. I’d gotten to know every inch of him in these past few weeks. Past few months, really. But I’d never gotten a sense of whether he wanted more.

“What do you expect me to be?”

The question was only a whisper, yet it seemed to echo in the small space. Andy dropped his eyes. I could feel the wheels turning in his head, and I didn’t want to interrupt. I didn’t want to push.

“I think I’ve made my feelings for you very clear,” he said.

“Have you?”

He glared at me then. “For someone who worships a goddess of love, you are properly oblivious, you know that?”

I stilled on the floor. My upper arms were beginning to ache, and my foot was falling asleep, but when I looked up at Andy, I forgot it all.

His lips were peeled back from his teeth in irritation. “Do you mean that?” I asked.

“Mean what? That you’re blind?”

“That you love me?”

Andy gave an aggrieved sigh. “We spend every day together, Astrid. Of course I love you.”

I pressed up on my arms and kissed him then. His lips tasted of honey—someone had been tasting the porridge, it seemed.

I pulled back for a half second as something occurred to me. “But we’re not dating!”

Andy rolled his eyes. “I know how you are, Astrid. I didn’t want to put a label on it. I didn’t need to. Again, we see each other nearly every day.”

I lunged for him again. One of the pillow walls rocked, and Andy only nearly caught it before it came tumbling down on our heads.

“I love you, too,” I said.

The annoyance faded from Andy’s lips. “Really?” he said.

“Really,” I said.

This time, Andy kissed me, and the pillow walls were no match.

***

When we extricated ourselves from the fort, we found an empty bowl on the hearth. An empty bowl and a note.

_“Thanks for the Cream of Wheat, but I prefer oatmeal. Clean up your ridiculous pillow mess.”_

**Author's Note:**

> A tomte (known as a nisse in Norway) are creatures of Swedish folklore. They act similarly to the more well-known brownies or hobs of English folklore. They inhabit a home or a farm, and are said to look after its residents, bringing them success and luck. They are prideful creatures, who are quick to anger when they're insulted. They don't care for laziness, disorder, swearing, or sudden change.
> 
> [Wikipedia ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisse_\(folklore\))  
> [More information on tomtar](https://www.ingebretsens.com/culture/traditions/legend-of-nisse-and-tomte)


End file.
